Page 50 of Her Beautiful Bastard
“Ah, goddamn it!” Wortham bellowed, glaring up at him. “What the devil is wrong with you?”
What remained of Sinclair’s control melted away, the years’ worth of rage and pain he’d kept compressed in his middle unfurling all at once. It was spilling out of him in a rush he could not control.
This, he realized as he stooped to grasp Wortham’s lapels and haul him to his feet, had been inevitable.
“You,” he rasped, his upper lip curling with derision as he looked Wortham in the eye. “Youare what is wrong with me, and you have been for quite some time.”
Keeping hold of his lapel with one hand, Sinclair drew back his opposite fist and let it fly. It met Wortham’s nose with a satisfying crunch, a spray of blood warming his hand and splattering his cravat. The man crumpled, and Sinclair went down on top of him, unable to stop now that he’d drawn blood. He had fantasized about this for so long … killing with his bare hands the man who had cuckolded him.
He blotted out the sounds of the cries of his guests, the shouts of the other men urging him to stop. As he went down on top of Wortham, he put his weight behind another swing, this one crashing into one perfectly sculpted cheekbone. He knelt over the man, battering him with his fists, his chest burning from all the fury sawing in and out of his lungs in enraged pants, the fire in his belly roaring hotter and hotter with each blow.
“Sinclair! Sinclair, stop that this instant!”
He faintly registered Drucilla’s voice, her exclamations coming at him between hoarse coughing fits. A hand closed around his arm, but he shrugged it off, going back to the man whose comeuppance had been five long years in the making.
“Sinclair!” Drucilla wailed, pausing to cough and hack before screeching at him again. “Stop! You will kill him!”
Good. Sinclair wanted to kill him. He wanted to destroy the man who’d had a hand in tearing his world, his life, to shreds. And when he was done, he wanted to kill the second person responsible. He wanted to wrap his hands around her lily white throat and squeeze until she ceased to draw breath.
Fury drove him, all rational thought melting away in the wake of the emotions he’d held at bay for so long. He was unsure how long he went on pummeling Wortham, but he was eventually jerked away, a strong grip under his arms hauling him swiftly across the room. He twisted and writhed in the hold, roaring and spewing epithets, demanding to be let go so that he could go on taking his frustrations out on Wortham. The world around him seemed to have faded away, and he existed in a place where only he and the objects of his torment existed.
Until Lydia appeared before him, her face twisted in a mask of horror and concern, one hand reaching out toward him. Calm suffused him the instant her hand cupped his face, going slack in the arms of the man he soon realized was Charles. His friend held him down, arms like tight bands around his chest while Lydia knelt in front of him, eyes filled with tears.
“That’s it,” she whispered, so low Sinclair felt certain only he and Charles could hear. “Come back to me. It is over now. You have to come back.”
Shoulders heaving from the force of his ragged breath, Sinclair blinked glassy eyes and glanced around the room. He’d been oblivious to the destruction he’d caused in his fit of rage, but the sight of it shamed him now—an overturned table and shattered vase nearby, the twinkling glass shards of the tumbler he’d broken over Wortham’s head, the man himself lying in a heap a few feet away. Drucilla knelt at his side, sobbing and coughing at the same time, her voice tortured as she wailed for her beaten lover. The man groaned and turned his face into her skirts, staining the white crimson. All the while, their horrified guests looked on in stunned silence, too shocked by what they’d just witnessed to even whisper about it among themselves.
“Oh, Miles … my poor, poor love,” Drucilla sobbed. “What has he done to you?”
Sinclair sneered, disgusted by the pair of them, his ire reemerging so swiftly, he could barely contain it. But then, Lydia’s hand stroked his face, and she edged closer, her body acting as a barrier between him and his wife fretting over a man who’d just been on the business end of his fist.
“It does not matter,” she murmured, her hand soft on his cheek, her voice like a soothing balm flooding his insides. “They cannot hurt you anymore. You won’t let them. It is over.”
Forcing a swallow through his constricted throat, he shrugged to be free of Charles’ hold. “Let go.”
“Only if you promise me that you are done,” Charles declared, his grasp never letting up for a second. “Promise me, Sin.”
“I said, let go,” he snapped. “I will not kill the bastard … this time.”
Charles reluctantly let him go, and Lydia stood to offer him a hand up. Even once he’d gotten to his feet, she held fast, her fingers tight around his, her eyes searching his face. He hated that she’d witnessed his loss of control, but could not pretend to regret what he had done. He had allowed Miles and Drucilla to make a fool of him for too long. There had been something freeing about finally giving the other man a taste of the pain that had been inflicted upon him, however temporarily.
He turned to find a handful of footmen hovering nearby, brows wrinkled and eyes darting as they seemed to wonder what they should do in such a situation.
“Have Lord Wortham’s carriage brought ’round and toss him inside,” he ordered. “I want him off my property within the next ten minutes.”
“Right away, Mr. Clayton,” one of them replied before rushing off to fetch the carriage.
The other two promptly knelt to lift Wortham’s limp body and carry him away. Drucilla rose to her feet and followed, murmuring mindless words of comfort to her lover, promising to come and visit him and nurse him herself. Sinclair was half-tempted to order her thrown into the carriage with him.
His wife whirled on him once Wortham had been carted from the room, face reddened, eyes wide and wild. “You-you idiot! You son of a bitch! You … you …”
“Bastard?” he offered with a dry scoff.
“Bastard!” she spat with every ounce of venom he knew her to possess. “You’ve ruined absolutely everything! I wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You are a lowly, baseborn commoner, and I wish your father had left you in the gutter where you belong!”
He stared at her in silence for a long moment, acutely aware of the low murmurs and gasps traveling through the party. The gazes falling upon him now were sympathetic ones, pitying and assessing.
Before he could respond, she lapsed into another coughing fit, doubling over as the powerful spasms wracking her body seemed to rob her of strength. Despite what she’d put him through tonight, and through the entire length of this house party, he would not stand there and watch her suffer.
